<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Offer Up Your Life For A Wish by kentuckycocktail</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26421496">Offer Up Your Life For A Wish</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kentuckycocktail/pseuds/kentuckycocktail'>kentuckycocktail</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dead Poets Society (1989)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anderperry if you squint, Bittersweet, Character Study, Family Issues, M/M, Summer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:40:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,487</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26421496</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kentuckycocktail/pseuds/kentuckycocktail</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"I may never be happy, but tonight I am content"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Todd Anderson/Neil Perry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Offer Up Your Life For A Wish</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Flat white teeth clink just inaudibly against the carefully polished glass. He rolls the yellow-ish liquid over his tongue until it turns warm and bitter against the muscle, letting it glide effortlessly down his throat that had earlier been filled with salty coastal air and the hot breeze of southern France. He never got this luxury at home; he was to savour it until next year. His arm folded loosely beneath the other, bent at the elbow to elegantly hold the wine glass to his face, Neil pulls at the hem of his light blue dress shirt – he marvels at the way it lay about his thighs, untucked and free from the waistband of his trousers. How freeing a feeling it is, to have no dress code and nobody here with enough authority to enforce such a thing.</p><p>            ‘How’s the wine, Neil?’ His aunt asks, topping up his mother’s glass generously while spearing a slice of mango and a large prawn on a cocktail stick in one swift movement. Her French accent has developed since last year, Neil registers, and smiles kindly at both his mother and her sister before returning a polite <em>lovely, thank you</em>.</p><p>            The party of three lapse back into silence with the empty space filled with the sloshing of waves below the cliff that their deck is perched upon. It’s early evening, a though confirmed as Neil turns his head casually to the right to take in the reddening horizon that reflects in the sea as an ever-growing stain of colour, interrupting the easy blue of the Mediterranean.</p><p>            Here, on his aunt’s back porch just miles from the town of Nice, Neil Perry forgets exactly who he is and where he came from. Most importantly, <em>who</em> he came from.</p><p>            The world darkens around him slowly, the cloudless sky allowing for the world to chill almost uncharacteristically compared to the comfortable heat of the rest of the day. It’s only his mother and him lounging around the round glass table, the tapping of her newly manicured fingernails the only sound permeating through the space. His chest glows.</p><p>            ‘I feel content.’</p><p>            His mother turns to him, rosy cheeks high on her face as she smiles a smile that creases her eyes into nothingness. ‘That’s good, Neil. That’s really good.’</p><p>            Smiling shyly, he picks up and puts down his long empty wine glass periodically. The blush of tipsiness that hugs his whole body is slipping away as the minutes drag on.</p><p>            ‘Are you happy, mom?’ Neil nearly implores her to <em>be honest </em>with him but he thinks it best to leave the question open ended. The pair know exactly what Neil is asking, and Barbara begins to feel a tinge of guilt that her 16-nearly-17-year-old son knows enough about her to ask such a question.</p><p>            She lies, ‘of course I am, Neil. I have you,’ smiling tightly. Neil wants to cry, but he can’t remember having allowed himself to show any such emotion since his father wound that buckled leather strap around his broad hand when he was eight and –</p><p>            ‘I’m going in now, Neil. Lock up, okay?’ Fuck. His mother is crying, right in front of him, expecting him to not move a muscle. She leans down to kiss him on the corner of his mouth, patting his back gently.</p><p>            ‘I love you, honey.’</p><p>            Neil’s eyes dampen. His throat grows sore and it’s difficult to say ‘I love you, too,’ back. The French doors click shut and he’s truly alone for what feels like the first time in his life. Of course he has sat alone in his bedroom, morose and despondent; alone in the library, studying after his father had called him up and acerbically reminded him to <em>forget about coming home for Christmas without all As</em>; alone in his dorm room, biting his lips to hold in tears lest his roommate fling open the door and catch him in a state of weakness. No: this loneliness felt so distinct, so new. The air is open and there’s no people snaking up and down the private beach below him, no boats floating away into oblivion on the water, and no sun in the sky to shine a spotlight on his features whatever expression they may make. The moon and the stars as his witness, Neil Perry sits and he cries, and cries, and cries, until the Earth becomes unbearably cold and distant and he just <em>has</em> to get rid of that pesky insect loitering around the rim of the sleek wine glasses.</p><p>            For the first time ever, while in France, Neil has a good long think about his father, the kind of train of thought he has at home where the man is an unavoidable presence. France is now tainted by Tom Perry, something neither Neil nor his mother wants, and something that is entirely Neil’s fault.</p><p>-</p><p>Summer sunlight breaks through the thin ochre-coloured curtains in the bedroom that Neil couldn’t remember dragging himself into last night. The white sheets are more wrinkled than usual – a restless night. That comes as no surprise.</p><p>            Neil grabs the euros from his bedside table, left over change from yesterday’s galivant around the small town, and hastily dresses. A croissant or a mouchoir au amande likely wouldn’t make up for the tense situation last night, but he could try.</p><p>            Hands slotted loosely into the pockets of his rolled-up trousers, he walks deliberately down the slope that leads to the market area. The houses that line the streets range from warm pastel pinks and yellows with window frames painted a gentle blue or homely red, to the older brown buildings that are free of any blemish with black signs above the blistered doorways that read <em>fromage</em>, <em>boulangerie</em>, <em>bibliotheque. </em>Neil makes a mental note to come back and peruse the <em>bibliotheque</em> when he has time later in the day.</p><p>            He pushes the wooden door that leads into the bakery, the English Ivy spiralling down from the hanging baskets brushing against his warm skin that has begun to develop a tan he could never dream of getting in Vermont.</p><p>            In his best French, still spoken uncertainly and in choppy segments as he’d been made to favour Latin in his studies, he requests <em>deux croissants et… un mouchoir au amande, s’il vous plait.</em>  The woman that serves him every time he comes – and his mother, when she would walk down with him - smiles sympathetically, requesting the <em>neuf euroes </em>as clearly for Neil as she could, knowing Neil’s poor ear for French.</p><p>            ‘<em>Merci,</em>’ he nearly laughs, folding the brown paper bag closed and dropping the remainder of his change in the tip jar, as he wouldn’t be coming back into town tomorrow. No, tomorrow he was set to be back on a flight to Boston Logan, where his father would be waiting impatiently with folded arms in front of his car. Neil shivers in the sunlight.</p><p>-</p><p>Going back to board at Welton wasn’t as daunting an experience for Neil as it was for some other boys. The Perrys lived just miles from the campus, a short car ride away; perfect for when Tom decided Neil needed a refresher of his dictated purpose in life in the form of a captious earful before Welton’s curfew set in at ten p.m. So, whenever Neil heard some of the boys complaining about how far from Syracuse or Burlington they were, and how they couldn’t see their friends or get clothes they’d left behind, Neil felt a diminished amount of sympathy for them. Was it out of bitterness? Of course. Did feeling that way, even for a fleeting moment, make him feel guilty? Sure, but by Tom’s design guilt was not a new sensation to Neil by any means. It was a manageable sin.</p><p>            As he packs his bags in the dying sunlight, window of his room pulled wide open just to breathe some air that he hadn’t already, he misses his mother. She’s just down the hallway, getting ready for an early rise tomorrow to drop Neil off at Welton with his father – Neil misses his mother from France, the carefree version of her that doesn’t have to pretend to be hysterical at every wrong step her son makes. In France, Barbara can love her son. In Vermont, she was a housewife with no say, a useless bystander as a strange man that she doesn’t love anymore strikes down in mere seconds the human life that she spent nine months forming. All she can do by way of comfort afterwards is sit on Neil’s bed and hold him around the shoulders after the dust had settled and say, soothingly: ‘you hadn’t any need to upset him like that.’</p><p>            What feels like hours after the moon had come up for air Neil pads quietly down to the kitchen and expertly opens the fridge without a sound. Why he has such a strong desire for wine at this hour, he doesn’t know. Usually he can wait the year until he goes to France again, or at least until he could go to the off-license just across from Henley Hall that doesn’t check IDs, but for some reason he could barely last out the week. Maybe it was the arguing he tried desperately to tune out in the car on the way back from Boston; or the growing mentions of Harvard dropping out of his father’s mouth; or maybe just all of it, everything, cumulative over almost 17 years of being alive has led to this exact hidden moment of Neil’s life where he sneaks downstairs to sequester a pathetic amount of wine back to his bedroom before he heads back into the fold. Eventually, Neil stops thinking about truth and reason and causation and just drinks and drinks and falls asleep in a strange position on his bed that leaves an ache when he wakes up in the morning. He takes the physical ache over the mental throb of speculation any day.</p><p>-</p><p>The foliage on the front lawns of Welton smell sweet as they were treated to healthy glows of sunlight all summer long, Neil guesses as his father had boasted about the <em>spectacular summer</em> Vermont had this year in an attempt to make him and his mother feel – moronic? foolish? – for having gone abroad for the umpteenth time.</p><p>            Heading up the stairs to the imposing arched doors of the main entrance, Neil casts a look back to where thousands of cars are parked precariously close and nowhere near orderly. He sees a few familiar faces pop out of long, expensive looking cars, and equally out of humble suburban numbers. He feels a pang in his chest for all the round-faced new recruits to Welton, crying their eyes out as their embarrassed parents shield them from the unjudging eyes of others all the while reprimanding them in an ascetic whisper.</p><p>            ‘Neil,’ demands his father, steps ahead of him with an arm wrapped calculatedly around his mother.</p><p>            ‘Yes, father. Sorry…’ Neil rushes out, ducking to break into a light jog to catch up to his parents.</p><p>            Welton looks, sounds, and smells the same, and most of all evokes the same crushing feeling that you’re being watched with unblinking eyes from all corners. Not such as cameras, no, no – something far more improbable and supernatural was afoot. Neil entertains himself with this idea as he prepares to walk out with the banner that promotes the pillar of EXCELLENCE. It was an embarrassing walk to take, but Knox is with him and he supposes it isn’t all that bad. The two boys share knowing smirks and lackadaisical eyerolls from across the staff room as they prepare for their grand entrance into their penultimate induction ceremony. </p><p>            It’s everything not to laugh as the piercing squeal of the bagpipes raise from the transgressor of an instrument and up to the high ceilings of the academy, bouncing around the smooth curves of the building’s domes and back down to the pews of students and parents and teachers. Neil walks down the narrow space which cuts between the rows of pews, head high and shoulders back as instructed. He looks nowhere but ahead, just as you should in life.</p><p>            The four banner-bearers stop still at the front of the assembly, in turn reading their pillar as if it were what they were made out of. Tradition, honour, discipline –</p><p>            ‘Excellence.’</p><p>            Neil’s voice never feels like his own.</p><p>            Sitting back down, this time free of the burden of a rope around his neck and stiff fabric flapping against his torso, the ordeal repeats. Nolan repeats his spiel that he gives every year – except this time, this time it’s special. Welton’s 100<sup>th</sup>birthday. It’s said as if something noteworthy would happen this year, which nothing ever does, Neil thinks to himself bitterly. All that’ll happen is that he’ll have to come back next year at the end of it, and by then it’ll be 101 years old. The pillars are repeated. The honour code is repeated. What isn’t recycled material, however, is the introduction of a new English teacher – Keating. Neil likes English, in theory, but never the teachers. That sentiment could be applied to all subjects at Welton. Neil has written Keating off before Nolan can finish his name.</p><p>-</p><p>It's nice to see the guys again, he supposes. And his roommate is humble – quiet, but humble, which is a nice change from some of the guys here whose idea of self-importance is inflated by the number on his father’s pay check or the square footage of their house.</p><p>            ‘Travesty, horror, decadence, excrement.’</p><p>            Neil bums Charlie’s smoke, letting the toxins he knows all about from the chemistry summer school that Charlie just <em>had </em>to mention fill his lungs out and threaten to choke him from the inside.</p><p>            People are talking all around him. He knows it’s about study group, and Meeks is trying to justify Charlie’s behaviour to <em>Todd</em>, but Neil’s not really listening. He leans against his radiator, uncomfortable in his well-fitting blazer and feeling the searing heat on the seat of his pants.</p><p>            A knock at the door. Charlie throws the cigarette to Neil’s floor and grounds it down with the tip of his shiny brogues, succeeding to crush it into as fine a powder it would go as the door opens up crack by crack.</p><p>            ‘Mr Perry,’ the boys say in unison, standing in reverence.</p><p>            ‘Boys,’ his father eases, trying to act as if he didn’t expect that level of respect from anyone. Neil’s stomach soured.</p><p>            ‘Neil, I’ve decided that you’re taking too many extracurricular activities.’</p><p>            Oh, that’s rich, Neil manages to think in the middle of the panic that still clouds his mind at the sight of his father’s stern, furrowed brow and grave voice.</p><p>            ‘I’ve spoken to Mr. Nolan about it, and he’s agreed to let you drop the school annual.’</p><p>            Neil Perry feels as if he’s been thrown into ice. ‘What? Father, I’m the assistant editor!’</p><p>            His father remains level. ‘I’m sorry, Neil.’</p><p>            The fact that his father’s stiff response doesn’t match Neil’s histrionics makes him all the more unreasonable. ‘But, Father, that’s not fair. I…’</p><p>            Shit. He’s done it. He knows he’s done it before his father’s steady yet askance stare can drop into a glare. His hand grabs the silver doorknob, extending his arm by way of beckoning Neil into the hallway.</p><p>            ‘Fellows, would you excuse us a minute?’</p><p>            Neil hates how he smiles at them. How he could believe for a second that his friends don’t know <em>everything</em> that Tom’s done to him. Of course, they don’t know the gruesome details. Neil can’t even be sure that he knows the worst of it.</p><p>            There are still students and parents milling about in the hallway. Neil feels them all look away pointedly as his father backs him up to the doorframe, bringing them nose to nose as his voice drops to a conspiratorial hiss. Over his father’s shoulder he can see Cameron, apparently oblivious, mulling over a textbook already. Oh, to be anywhere but here.</p><p>            ‘I will <em>not </em>be disputed in public; do you understand me?’</p><p>            There’s still some fight in Neil, though he’s read the room – move to apology. ‘Father,’ he says lamely. ‘I wasn’t disputing you, I…’</p><p>            ‘When you’ve finished medical school and you’re on your own…’</p><p>            There he goes again. Medical school.</p><p>            His father finishes talking and Neil calls off the ringing in his ears. Looking at the floor, he gives the tried and tested ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry.’ Regardless of what came before, that always spread some glue into the cracks.</p><p>            His resolve crumbled further. ‘You know me. Always taking on too much.’</p><p>            ‘Good boy. Call us if you need anything.’</p><p>            Tom turns to leave, hand still clasped onto his son’s shoulder. ‘You know how much this means to your mother.’</p><p>            And he’s gone. Not for good, but at least out of Neil’s hair for a few weeks. Charlie and Knox spill out of his room, having obviously had their ears pressed to the door the entire time. Charlie ribs Neil gently, and Neil ribs him back. It’s all normal again and all is right in the world because Neil listened to his father, and that’s what he’ll tell himself until he goes to the grave.</p><p>            ‘It’s fine, Charlie, I don’t give a damn. I don’t give a damn about any of it.’          </p><p>            The boys get the idea. Moving with caution, as if Neil will crack like shattered porcelain, hastily glued back together, if they take one wrong move, they dredge back to their dorms, leaving Neil alone in the hallway with his father’s breath still in his nose and the sinking feeling that tugs at every muscle fibre in his body still lingering there. He drops his head back against the wall, letting his body relax from the military-like posture and poise with which he carries himself.</p><p>            Swiping at his eyes, he feels ready to see the only person that doesn’t know the full extent, the true meaning, of what had just happened. It was more than a ‘telling-off’ in the hallway; that happened all the time to nearly every boy in this school. To this Todd, Neil was probably just like him, and just like every other boy Todd’s seen today with their stern and irascible parents. Neil can just about handle the thought of that, being just like everybody else.</p><p>-</p><p>Classes drag – and they drag even more when the weight of someone else’s world rests on your mind. In every minute of every class, Neil related each piece of new and totally forgettable content back to his father: could this be useful for med school? Would he expect me to know this? Will he get angrier if I drop a few points in this class, or the one I have next?</p><p>            Inevitably, Neil spent much of his free time playing catch-up for all the ponderances he made in class time.</p><p>            His quiet new roommate sits stiffly at his desk in their room, seemingly setting the time on the clock he was fiddling with earlier. Neil keeps sneaking furtive glances out of the corner of his eye and soon enough feels wrong for betraying the unspoken agreement the two of them already had that neither of them were to nose into each other’s lives. That rule was made very clear when Neil felt Todd about to – well-meaningly, of course – ask what the mishap was with his father. Remembering his own hostility, Neil returns his eyes resolutely to the circumlocutions of the Latin phrase book held open by his thumb. Blinking away the stinging tiredness, he reads on, remembering with urgency the three weeks’ worth of chemistry reports that were due tomorrow morning.</p><p>            ‘W-why aren’t you at the study group?’ Came the effete voice.</p><p>            Closing the book on his thumb Neil cocks his head to his shoulder and sighs. ‘I dunno, Todd. Why aren’t you?’</p><p>            Todd smiles clemently. ‘You know why <em>I </em>don’t go. You’ve gone every night for the three weeks I’ve been here. Something happen with Charlie? Meeks?’</p><p>            Neil finds the slightest twinge of frustration hug his chest. ‘Does there have to be a reason? And no, I don’t think I <em>do </em>know why you don’t go.’</p><p>            But of course, Neil did. And Todd knew that Neil hadn’t just forgotten. Almost apologising to Todd, but biting his tongue at the last second –</p><p>            <em>Neil, you needn’t have answered back to your Father like that…</em></p><p>- Neil returns to his work, leaving Todd return to his. His focus is even more fragmented now, mind pulled and stretched over all different subjects, people, faces, voices. The mind never stops, and Neil feels as though it particularly never stops for him. Feeling vaguely persecuted, he decides he’s willing to take the blunder for chemistry and shuts off his bedside lamp, pulling his body tightly into the wall beside him.</p><p>            ‘Night, Neil.’ Todd. Barely audible.</p><p>            ‘Goodnight, Todd.’</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>